"General impressions are never to be trusted. Unfortunately when they are of long standing they become fixed rules of life and assume a prescriptive right not to be questioned. Consequently those who are not accustomed to original inquiry entertain a hatred and horror of statistics. They cannot endure the idea of submitting sacred impressions to cold-blooded verification. But it is the triumph of scientific men to rise superior to such superstitions, to desire tests by which the value of beliefs may be ascertained, and to feel sufficiently masters of themselves to discard contemptuously whatever may be found untrue." (Sir Francis Galton)
"Indeed, when in the course of a mathematical investigation we encounter a problem or conjecture a theorem, our minds will not rest until the problem is exhaustively solved and the theorem rigorously proved; or else, until we have found the reasons which made success impossible and, hence, failure unavoidable. Thus, the proofs of the impossibility of certain solutions plays a predominant role in modern mathematics; the search for an answer to such questions has often led to the discovery of newer and more fruitful fields of endeavour." (David Hilbert)
"Mathematical inquiry lifts the human mind into closer proximity with the divine than is attainable through any other medium." (Hermann Weyl)
"Most practical questions can be reduced to problems of largest and smallest magnitudes […] and it is only by solving these problems that we can satisfy the requirements of practice which always seeks the best, the most convenient." (Pafnuty L Chebyshev)
"Nature responds only to questions posed in mathematical language, because nature is the domain of measure and order." (Alexandre Koyré)
"[…] no human inquiry can be called science unless it pursues its path through mathematical exposition and demonstration." (Leonardo da Vinci)
"Science descends ever more deeply into the hidden recesses of things, but it must halt at a certain point when questions arise which cannot be settled by means of sense observations. At that point the scientist needs a light which is capable of revealing to him truth which entirely escapes his senses. This light is philosophy." (Pope Pius XII)
"[...] the sole object of science is the honor of the human spirit and that under this view a problem of numbers is worth as much as a problem on the system of the world." (Carl G J Jacobi [letter to Legendre])
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